


A Life Full of Color

by deathmallow



Series: The Long Road Home [10]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Children, Coping with trauma, F/M, Future Fic, PostWar, The Abernathings, nextgen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 20:51:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/654294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of various prompts given to me regarding Haymitch/Johanna's children and the realities of parenting the postwar generation, will probably involve some other post-war, nextgen prompts too (Finnick/Annie, Katniss/Peeta, Thom/Delly, etc.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Happily Ever After

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Carbon Leaf's "The War Was In Color": _What good did it do?/Well hopefully for you/A world without war/A life full of color_
> 
> Thanks to those of you submitting prompt ideas for this. :) You're welcome to submit more prompts on my Tumblr (whiskeysnarker.)
> 
> May involve brief, generally non-explicit mentions of war, death, sexual slavery, etc.

She’d always known it was coming, but of course like with most things with the kids, it surprised her when it just happened without warning. But then, kids were surprising in general with what they got into and what they just felt free to say. If people ever thought she was tactless, they ought to try a clever five-year-old smart enough to notice things and be curious on for size. Wally was reading quietly, lost in his own world as he often was. The twins were asleep, for now. But June was obviously bored and so she fixated on her favorite person to amuse her. “Daddy,” June asked, “why are you so old?” 

Her first impulse was to protest, _He’s not that old_. Not even fifty yet, and for those years, Haymitch looked pretty damn good. Years of distance now away from the stress and the depression and the bottle had certainly helped. Sure, there was definitely silver now in his black hair, but he wasn’t old. Old meant closer to dying, and he wasn’t anywhere near that, she wouldn’t accept it. Still more than young enough to do his job and be a father to the kids and a husband to her, both in and out of bed, thanks very much. If anything he almost seemed younger than when she’d known him ten, fifteen years ago.

Then right on the heels of that was, _He’s that old because he had to go through total physical, emotional, and mental hell for a lot of years._ But that would mean explaining far too much. The scars, which they couldn’t hide from their own kids forever, they had both explained away for now as the result of an “accident”. Never mind the accident had involved several weeks and a lot of deliberate action by torturers. The kids didn’t need to know that.

He must have heard her swift intake of breath, ready to say something, because he glanced over at her and made a small gesture of, Got it. “Well,” he drawled with that faintly amused smile he had, “I suppose if I’m old, it’s because I’ve lived a good bit of years.”

June wasn’t amused with an answer that literal. “But why are you old?” she insisted. “Uncle Thom isn’t old, or Uncle Finnick, and Mommy isn’t old either.” Nice to know her kids didn’t consider her decrepit yet. When she was that age, thirty-four would have been ancient to her. She could point out that other “aunts” and “uncles” like Brutus and Hazelle were certainly “old” by that definition, but with June having fixed on the difference between her father and some of the other fathers she knew, that wouldn’t satisfy.

Haymitch sighed, reached down, and scooped her up, perching her on his knee. She waited, attentive, expecting her answer. “All right, Junebug.” He looked thoughtful for a minute. “The thing is, see. When I was young…”

“Like me?” Seeing he had it handled, she resumed her carving, the set of spoons for the kitchen she was making for Peeta for New Year’s. Or maybe they were spoons to whack Katniss’ hand with when she kept trying to steal cookie dough. Johanna’s sympathies were entirely with Katniss, though. Pregnancy cravings really were a bitch. _Take it for all it’s worth_ , she’d advised with a sly grin. _It’s no easy business growing a kid and you and are I both lucky enough they’ll jump if we tell ‘em we want something._

“No, not as young as you. Young like, say, Rory or Vick. Lot of things happened back then.” She could hear the pauses, feel him grappling with the idea of trying to get across the magnitude of the Games and the Capitol and their horrors without actually talking about the Games. “The world wasn’t a very good place then and it didn’t seem like it was going to ever get any better. So I was…well, I got pretty sad. And when things didn’t change at all, I stayed that way.”

June wriggled impatiently, firing off more questions. “Why wasn’t it going to change? Was there an evil witch? Did she cast a spell?” 

“Well, he—it was a man, honey, not a lady—certainly had a lot of people under his power.” Yeah, she’d say that the thrall of sheer terror counted as a spell.

“For years and years?”

“Years and years,” he confirmed. “And me, well, I was….”

“Cursed!” June piped up happily, her eyes alight as she suddenly thought she had it all figured out. “The bad man, he cursed you and so you’re old ‘cause you had to wait _all those years_ for Mommy to come along and set you free, right?”

“You could say that was the case.” She looked up and Haymitch was looking at her, grey eyes gentle.

She was trying to not start chuckling because all at once it was sweet and yet it cut too close to what had happened in some ways. Maybe it wasn’t a magic spell, but he’d been cursed, all right—turned into a shadow of himself, depressed, isolated, whored out, drunk, too hurt to let himself care. None of them had the luxury of just sleeping it off for a century surrounded by a thorn-hedge waiting for rescue. They’d had to endure, and in the end, rescue themselves. As for herself, what she’d been turning into, a creature of pure rage, that had been a curse too.

“Well, he set me free from the curse too,” she said, more to him than to June, seeing the look on his face, the soft and knowing smile he gave her for it. “I was…sad too.” She’d just covered it well with her anger. “I just didn’t have to wait as long.”

Curiosity piqued, June swiveled and stared at her, then back at Haymitch. “So it was a kiss, right?” she demanded gleefully. “You broke the curse with a kiss and then you fell in love and you weren’t sad?”

It certainly hadn’t been a kiss that got rid of Coriolanus Snow in the end. She wasn’t sure she’d call that first kiss after Finnick’s wedding, fierce and awkward as it had been, anything epic and curse-breaking. It had been far more about desperation and loneliness than anything romantic. Shaken and maybe even scared by having revealed too much, they ended up yelling and insulting each other right after it rather than gazing into each other’s eyes and swearing eternal love. But in one sense, yes, it had started to awake both of them. They wouldn’t be where they were now without it.

“Yeah,” Haymitch said finally, still gazing over at her. “Yeah, we did, Junebug. And then we beat Sn—the sorcerer—because a lot of good people decided they weren’t going to be afraid of him anymore.” 

The day would come to talk about the Games, and the guilt, and the shame, and the whoring, and all of it. They couldn’t avoid it forever. But for now, cloaked in the simple words of fairy tales, at least some of it could be told in a way they could understand and accept. In some ways she wished these simple days where a magical kiss could vanish the hurt entirely would last forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For districtunrest/marblesharp: a prompt of just pure Abernathing goodness.


	2. OF Bears and Scars

Haymitch heard Juniper first calling for him. That would always be the case—but for his footsteps, which clattered through the house as noisily as any other child’s would, Walter was the most silent kid he’d perhaps ever known. Sensing an imminent disaster, at least in the perspective of a four-year-old, he put aside the papers and got up from his desk. 

Fuck, he just hoped nobody was bleeding or badly injured, he and Johanna had been lucky so far and hadn’t had to deal with that, just ordinary childish scrapes and cuts. Visions of the kids broken and bleeding and dying flew through his mind and his stomach churned, but he forced himself to call down as he heard June again and decided with a practiced ear that she sounded upset, but not panicked and scared to death.

Just as he passed through the door of his office his eldest son and his daughter skidded to a stop in front of him and he looked down at the tears and snot on her face, the red-rimmed brown eyes. Crouching down he asked, “What happened, Junebug?”

She was clutching the stuffed bear to her chest that he recognized as the one Katniss and Peeta gave to her when she was a baby, the one she was never without. She just kept sobbing, obviously unable to say, and she started bawling all over again.

Wally reached out and tapped him on the shoulder, and Haymitch looked over at him. Brow furrowed in concentration, Wally’s hands started forming the signs, deliberate and careful, as most everything he did seemed to be, even at only five. June might be his ears and sometimes his interpreter, but Wally guarded her as fiercely as Haymitch ever had Ash as kids. _We were over at Bramble’s_ , Thom and Delly Coultree’s own son and one of June's best friends. Haymitch wondered if this was going to turn into a talk of “Your kid was an asshole to my kid to the point she was crying when she came home” with Thom, and his temper flared at the thought of it. _They had puppies and she put down Barney to play with them and two of the dogs started chewing…_

Oh. The bear was torn up, that was all. “Let’s see Barney,” he said, signing as well for Wally’s benefit, carefully coaxing the bear out of her hands, which was no mean feat considering how she was clutching it. 

She let out a strangled gasp of protest, insisting, “They killed him!” 

He stared down at it, aghast. The brown fur had plenty of slobber on it, but that would wash. But one black button eye hung crookedly by a thread, and the teeth of one of the dogs had caught the seam running up the bear’s belly and ripped it open. A huge wad of white cotton stuffing poked out the hole and the half-deflated body of the bear was floppy in his hands.

He thought he might puke and he could hear the harsh rasp of his breathing. But it was all right there in his mind. The empty hole of Sapphire’s eye and how he’d felt a moment of resistance behind the eye and then something give as he’d stabbed—apparently he hadn’t damaged her brain enough to kill her immediately or paralyze her or anything. Running through the woods, the greasy, unwieldy mess of his own guts threatening to slip through his fingers, smelling blood and shit and fear, so far gone he didn’t even know what the fuck he aimed to do on that clifftop but knowing only she was as fast as he was and bigger and stronger so the one chance he had was to somehow use the one thing she didn’t know about.

Now Juniper was looking at him with that upset expression. “Daddy?” she said, and it was that word, how it would never have applied to him then, and the fear in her voice that reached him as a father, that snapped him out of it.

“Oh, it’s not so bad, Junebug,” he said, trying to clear his mind. “He just needs a little surgery, that’s all.”

Wide childish eyes studied him hopefully. She tugged at the end of one ink-black pigtail. “Can you fix him?” she whispered, biting her lip. 

He can fix anything, Wally said, seeing the signs his little sister instinctively made for him, growing up both speaking and signing as she had. Shit. He felt like he couldn’t breathe again. 

He thought about twenty-three years of sewing up dead children down in the tribute morgue—failure after failure after failure. All he was doing was cleaning up the mess, not saving anything. Then there was the vision of Finnick laid out on Taffeta’s table and frantically trying to sew him up and stop the bleeding because they’d just lost Gale and he couldn’t bear to watch Finnick die. But interwoven with the memories of blood and horror was the hope on June’s face and the confidence shining through in Wally’s expression— _he can fix anything, he can fix anything_.

“Let’s see,” he said, tucking Barney underneath his arm and giving the bulk of his stuffing guts a careful poke back into the cavity where they belonged, relieved at the feel of dry, fluffy cotton between his fingers rather than slippery ropes of intestine. Finding a needle and thread quickly enough, he had the crazily dangling eye fixed in no time.

Tending to a couple dozen tributes, even discounting the ones where nothing he could have done would make them presentable, had made his stitches neat. The parents might not understand the meaning of his careful sutures when they dressed their child’s body for the last time; all they would have seen was a dead child and the failed mentor responsible for it. But he had always done his best for the tributes in that one last, small thing, to make the wounds more bearable for their living kin.

Wiping off the bear with a damp rag with some soap and water to get the worst of the dog drool off and then rubbing Barney’s fur down with a towel to help dry it, he handed the bear back to June. “There you are. All better.”

She prodded the neat line of stitches slightly visible on her bear’s belly. He wasn’t from Eight, after all. Basic stitching and mending and buttons; that was the best he could manage. “He’ll be OK?” she said doubtfully.

“He’ll be OK,” he told her and Wally both. “Scars…they just mean you’re strong enough that you survived someone hurting you.” He thought about his children, their skin still so perfect and unblemished and their souls just the same. Life would give them scars of their own soon enough. But for now he just prayed they could stay unhurt as long as they could. He reached out and touched her cheek. “So he’s a tough little bear.” He’d had a tribute in the 62nd Games that hadn’t survived a mauling by wolf mutts—Daisy. Apparently the bear was luckier than that.

She gave him a smile with all the warmth of the sun. “Thanks, Daddy,” she said, and just like that, the fear and worry vanished. Bear in her arms she charged off to another adventure where the newly-scarred Barney probably starred as some kind of hero. Wally spared a moment to roll his eyes in mock resignation, waved him an idle goodbye and thanks, and then headed off after her, his feet pounding against the floorboards. 

That night after he put the two of them to bed, after Johanna had settled the baby down, he found himself deliberately tracing her scars like he hadn’t in years. They’d already been there the first time the two of them slept together in Thirteen; they’d long ago just become part of her for him. “Heard you did a little miracle working on Barney today,” she said softly, arching her back into his touch.

“He’ll have a nice scar to show for it,” he told her equally quietly, his fingertip running along the ridge of a scar echoing the curve of her ribs just above.

“She’ll love him to distraction anyway,” she told him matter-of-factly. The lingering of her hand on his own scars told him she understood. “Maybe he’s a little more raggedy for it,” her breath was warm on his neck as she kissed him, “but he’s hers.” He found himself smiling against her lips as he wrapped his arms around her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For mathgirl24, a prompt based on a GIF of Winnie-the-Pooh losing his stuffing guts and how Haymitch would react to that. ;)


	3. Dragonslayers

It had bugged her the entire night. Peeta had tried to get her to talk about it and she’d pretty much ended up biting his head off in frustration. Katniss tried the door and it was open; she knew Haymitch was probably in, finishing up breakfast and getting the kids off to school before he started his endless stack of memos and phone calls and whatever else. Johanna was likely already at the construction site for the college, barking orders at people and telling them they were being idiots and not following her blueprint.

The idea that her kids would be able to be anything, be something other than coal miners amazed her sometimes. The world they were growing up in was so very different, so little in common with the old hardscrabble desperation of District Twelve life. Though that was the trouble, wasn’t it?

She found him in the kitchen at the sink, finishing up the dishes. Haymitch looked at her for a long moment, grey eyes searching her expression before he put down the dishcloth and turned to her, “I can see it all over your face, sweetheart, so let’s just have you tell me what the hellions did before you end up throwing the good plates.”  
“I do not throw things!” she snapped, her temper flaring.

He just chuckled, shaking his head, and said, “Do I need to put the knives away too before they end up in the wall or in the countertop?”  
She scowled at him as she pulled a chair out from the table and he got two mugs of coffee, sliding one over to her. She thought she’d never quite get over the luxury of dumping cream and sugar into it, the silky richness of it on her tongue mingled with the bitter bite of the coffee. She also thought she’d never quite get over the odd feeling of guilt at how much she enjoyed those little luxuries, or Peeta’s pastries or fresh-baked bread, how she’d gotten to the point that it was an everyday thing now.

“Kids?” Haymitch prompted, taking a sip of his own coffee—black. He always made it strong as anything. She gave up and reached for the cream and sugar he’d put out. He knew her too well. “What did they do yesterday, break your bow?”

No, it wasn’t just his Robbie and Nicky, it was Finnick and Annie’s Shay and Delly and Thom’s Mace and even her own Daisy. Maybe it was because this was her own child rather than the kids of her family, maybe it was the boisterousness of that particular group compared to the other, older kids, but she nodded out the window to the backyard where even now Daisy was chasing Robbie around, shrieking with delight. Treating learning to hunt as just for fun was so far from the terror and desperation of poaching in the woods for survival—and she’d seen Daisy and Shay playing with stick-swords the other day and she’d thought of Cato, and Cashmere, and all the Games of her childhood. “It’s all a game to them, Haymitch.”

He made a low grunt of acknowledgment at that, not needing elaboration. “It’s changed, Katniss,” he said quietly. “They’re not gonna grow up with all of that.”

“I know that!” she snapped at him. “But every time I see her playing with sticks and pretending it’s a sword, or when she wants to use my bow as a toy…” The shudder worked its way down her spine. The thought of her child as someone she couldn’t even understand, someone whose actions sparked an instinctive loathing and anger, bothered her.

“We didn’t run into it so much with Wally,” he said matter-of-factly. “He’s always been, well, his adventures are more in his head.” He sat back in his chair, grey eyes suddenly far away. “June, though…” He shook his head. “Used to see kids in the Capitol all the time. Playing like they were tributes, toy swords and the like. They were making a killing on toy bows after you went into the arena.” His smile was suddenly hard. “No pun intended. Sorry. But there were those, and the victor action figures, and all that shit. I see June fighting with Dylan one day over some toy…” He shook his head.

“You flip out and have to leave?” she asked bluntly. She had barely escaped before she lost her temper.

“Worse. Yelled at her, went on a rant, told her it was no fucking game, you can imagine.” He glanced over at her, and suddenly he looked older than he was, as if he’d aged ten years right before her eyes. “There’s no shittier feeling than seeing your own kid is scared because suddenly you’ve gone fucking berserk and they don’t understand what happened.”

She could imagine that, and she could tell that he took it hard. Haymitch always had, seemed like, when it came to kids. “I left before I said something.”

“Smart girl,” he said.

“I’m not a girl.”

He looked at her and a faint smile touched his mouth. “No, suppose not. But Daisy is. They don’t understand, see? They don’t have the Games to give them nightmares. To them, a bow’s just for hunting for sport, or for playing with their friends, and fighting over a toy is not big deal. Could just ban them from using weapons at all, but how are we going to explain that? It ain’t the bow that’s wrong, or that sword they’re imagining in that stick. It’s no wrong thing, a little kid wanting to play out some story where they’re killing a dragon and saving the world. A bow can save your life too, right? It’s the Games that were wrong, not the weapon.”

Thinking that over, she sighed and drank some more of her coffee. “So what, you’re saying it’s our problem, suck it up and deal with it?” She wasn’t sure she could deal with years and years of Daisy making her flash back to the arena, or all the Games she’d seen growing up.

“I don’t want ‘em terrified of fighting and weapons and totally unable to hunt or defend themselves. It was those skills that saved us all back in the arena and the war. They need to respect fighting and understand when it’s wrong, not outright fear it. But they’re too young to understand for now. I’ll let ‘em have their play. But I told them—not in the backyard, and it’s fine to pretend to kill nasty dragons and evil wizards, but they don’t fight each other or pretend to kill each other, or anyone they know. Ever.”  
“That’ll do for now, huh?” It wasn’t everything, but the idea of trying to explain to a four-year-old just why she was so upset wasn’t going to happen.

“It’ll do. They’re kids, Katniss. They’ll be old enough for us to have to tell them about the Games soon enough,” he told her, and she could tell the idea of it troubled him. Wally already had to be getting close to that age, and she knew the oldest Abernathy child, left undistracted by a noisy world, tended to see and perceive far too much. A lot like his father.

“Wally asking questions already?”

Haymitch finished his coffee before answering, and she saw his hands tighten around the mug. “Of course. And it’s figuring out what’s safe to answer when he’s still that young and what has to wait until later. And how to say any of it, period. You’ll have to do it someday too with Daisy.”

The topic made her uncomfortable enough that she shifted off of it in a big hurry. That particular dragon to be slain could wait until she and Peeta could come at it in due time and with an actual plan. Daisy was so little yet, and they’d all been so careful to limit the access the media had to any of the kids. “All right, so I tell her playing at hunting is OK, but not hunting people. And no punching, period.” 

“Just try to set some rules. But don’t make her feel ashamed for being a kid and wanting to play pirates, and don’t punish her too hard if she screws up and punches Shay or either of my two little hellspawn. Don’t do what I did. I dealt with it and I told her it wasn’t her fault, and we handled it. I know June forgot it soon enough—damn lucky that young kids are so forgiving and so resilient—but I won’t forget it.“ He wouldn’t. Even bringing it up had obviously bothered him a good deal.

“Robbie might deserve a punch in the nose,” she told him, though she was only joking. She really wanted to get that look off his face and prodding him was the best way she knew how. 

It worked. Flippantly, he answered her, “I blame the Mason blood in him.”

“No, all your childhood misbehaving was probably stealthy and you just shamelessly enabled other kids.”

Another smirk. “Got it in one. Don’t worry so much. You and Peeta will do fine with Daisy.” He nodded towards her stomach beneath Peeta’s loose t-shirt. “With that one too.”

“Damn you, how did you…” She shook her head in frustration. She was barely two months in, how the hell did he know these things?

“Jo and I noticed you were eating lots of strawberries again when you went berrypicking last weekend,” he said dryly. “You did that with Daisy.”

She scowled at him as he laughed, and poured her another cup of coffee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a prompt by paraserlibreamate on Tumblr for Everlark and Hayhanna babies having playtime. Because I just couldn't write fluff. ;)


	4. Bearing Gifts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For districtunrest, requesting: "daddy!Haymitch has to dress up as Santa because the costume didn't fit Peeta, who totally wanted to do it".

"Please, Haymitch," Peeta pleaded, "It’s New Year’s Eve and I’ve got to get the rest of these orders done—I spent most of the day looking after Katniss already."

Peeta was covered in white powder, especially his face—Haymitch tried to avoid the sarcastic thought that Peeta looked like some rich Capitol kids in clubs back during Haymitch’s old days as a victor-whore. But those blue eyes looked frazzled, and the kitchen looked like a bakery explosion, flour and sugar and butter and food dye everywhere. 

A pregnant wife having a rough first trimester would fuck up anyone’s plans for the day, Haymitch was well aware. He was lucky that Johanna was enduring this time through without any real trouble. So he couldn’t help the sympathetic urge to help Peeta out. ”It’s just delivering cookies to the school?” he said.

"Well, there’s the costume, and we’re about the same size…"

Haymitch backed off a step, hands up defensively. ”Whoa, hold it there. Costume?”

Ten minutes later he stood in Peeta’s kitchen dressed in the itchy fur-trimmed red wool coat, black trousers, and leather boots. The fake beard itched most of all. ”I’m going to fucking kill Plutarch for his whole Santa idea,” he said grouchily. The Secretary of Communications was responsible for the idea of bringing back “Santa Claus” as a cheerful holiday figure for the kids. He’d kicked it off with some holiday specials on television to introduce the idea.

Granted, apparently Santa Claus from the pre-disaster days had been quite chubby—Haymitch might be comfortably carrying a few extra pounds again, but nothing quite on the scale of the jolly old fat man Plutarch had showed him. But the lush white beard and mustache carried far too many reminders of Coriolanus Snow, and he hadn’t been the first person to tell Plutarch that if he wanted his damn holiday icon, the old Santa needed a major redesign in a hurry. So now Santa was younger. The hat covered his own hair, but he was sure the blond beard, obviously meant for Peeta, looked somewhat ridiculous with his own olive skin and ink-black brows.

"You’ll be fine," Peeta said, though even as he was speaking he transferred more cookies to the cooling rack. "Just go in, be your oh-so-cheerful self…"

"And fuck you very much, Mellark,” he said in his most cheerful voice. ”I’ve dealt with kids, thank you.” Been trying to bring them goodies since before you were even born, though at least these don’t need a parachute, the old, cynical part of his brain thought, and he shoved it back down with effort. “Got two of my own at that school. That’s two more than you.” He’d also had to do more than his share of acting in the past. Compared to pleasing Capitol patrons with well-spun lies, this would be a cinch.

"Of course. You’ll be back and signing proclamations by the end of lunch with nobody the wiser."

"Next territorial law—I’m going to ban Santa Claus." He sighed. "Gimme the cookies already."

Peeta handed the tray of them over. ”Principal Showalter has the presents for all the kids—some new crayons and the like.”

By the time he hit the kindergarten classroom, and boomed “Happy New Year!” it wasn’t quite so bad, though the beard still itched like hell. June was there, beaming with excitement, and he tried to not want instinctively to grin at her. But that passed quickly enough when he saw the spectacle of thirty kids looking at him without any kind of fear, actually looking kind of excited. All right, no kid got too excited about meeting the district governor. 

But aside from that, there were far too many remembered years of being the district bogeyman, the one all the kids feared and even loathed because no kid that went with him ever survived. It didn’t seem so long ago that they had only the likes of taunts and snowballs in their contempt and terror for the town drunk. So looking at these kids now, staring at him with something like actual pleasure to see him, it hit him hard enough he felt like he couldn’t breathe. They were so young, so bright and full of promise, and they wouldn’t go die in the Games.

They didn’t instinctively hate him. Maybe that, more than a red wool coat, said plenty about what had changed in Panem.


	5. Against All Odds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For dorsalfinnick, prompt of "Hayhanna: 67%"

The wail started up in the middle of the night. Haymitch groaned, jolted awake immediately by the sound. Hard for him to even recall that for his first sixteen years of life he’d have slept through just about anything. The arena had changed that, along with so many other things.

“Got it,” Johanna mumbled, shoving off the covers and sitting up, groggily sighing but already getting to her feet.

“Nah, I’m up,” he pointed out gruffly. Walt had been so quiet, such a good baby, that neither of them were quite prepared for June. In over a year of fatherhood he still hadn’t gotten to the point where a crying child didn’t unnerve him enough that, especially woken up suddenly in the deep dark hours of the night, he instinctively had to reassure himself they were just tired or hungry or fussy and not actually terrified for their lives or being devoured by mutts. Blame the arena for that too.

The checklist as usual proved that June wasn’t hungry or messy or sick—or being devoured by mutts, for that matter. But she quickly quieted down at being picked up and held. Glancing down at June, her eyes already sliding shut again as she yawned, he understood that well enough too. Waking in a dark and lonely world was no treat, and for a tiny baby, it had to be terrifying. It had been frightening enough to a sixteen-year-old child who’d just been shorn of everyone who gave his life meaning, to lie there in the darkness and fear that the only thing that would ever be there in the night with him would be the nightmares. June just needed to know she hadn’t been abandoned, and to see once again that right down the hall were two people who loved and cherished her more than anything. “I’m here, sweetheart,” he murmured lowly to her, seeing how she calmed at being touched and held, at knowing she wasn’t alone and unloved. “I’m here.” 

Other parents talked about the annoyance of being woken up in the middle of the night by the kids. Probably some kind of statistics too—67% of the nights should be peaceful by whatever point, or something like that. Well, he could hardly claim he and Johanna were exactly “normal”. They were survivors. And they’d never had much patience for the supposed odds anyway, had they? Considering any of their kids would have a father and a mother who still woke up screaming sometimes, he couldn’t blame a child for that. Getting June back in the crib, tucking her back in carefully and staying an extra minute to be sure she was peacefully asleep, he padded back down the hall to Johanna. “She’s fine. Just woke up a little scared,” he said.

“Mm,” she said, burrowing closer to him as he lay back down. He spared a moment as ever to marvel: _This woman’s in my bed. I asked her there, she wants me, and she’ll always be here._ The thought would never quite lose its wonder for him, no matter how many years she might be there. “Thanks,” she said, laying her head on his shoulder sleepily. “Sorry. Wanted to rock your world last night but…too tired.”

He managed to laugh at that, already feeling his own eyelids growing heavy as he yawned. “I was falling asleep too. “ They’d both had long days at work and barely made it back for dinner. “We’ll ask, get Finn and Annie to take the kids for a few hours this weekend. They owe us.”

“Good,” she muttered. “Haven’t been really alone with you in…I don’t know…” She cut off mid-sentence abruptly giving way to a tiny snore. He smiled and closed his eyes too, content that everything right now was peaceful in his world.


	6. Barking Up the Right Tree

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Anon, prompt of "Haymitch/Johanna, June, wrong tree"

Tammy and the twins had stayed back in the Village with Katniss and Peeta, and Haymitch was sure that Peeta was keeping them well amused with his furious cookie baking while he, Johanna, Walt, and Juniper were out in the woods again, tromping through the snow and looking for that perfect New Year’s tree to put out in the parlor, as the box of carved ornaments from Seven was all ready.

June was up on his shoulders for a bit of a rest because trundling through the snow had tuckered her out, and suddenly she reached down and tapped his shoulder, saying, “We need that one, Daddy,” as she pointed towards a fir tree, somewhat spindly, with some bare patches and a crooked trunk.

He glanced over at Johanna, seeing her instinctive wince and imagining she was thinking that tree would have been good only for the pulp mills back in Seven—“Mm, maybe we can find another one, Junebug?” he asked carefully, swinging her down to her feet and crouching down in front of her.

She looked up at him and said with some worry in her voice, “But it’s still a good tree and it needs someone to love it…and if we don’t, maybe nobody else will see it should get a home for New Year’s.”

Didn’t that beat all, really—glancing over at Johanna, he knew she was thinking that yeah, they’d both been like that imperfect tree, rejected and overlooked, so he wasn’t at all surprised when she told June, “That one’s perfect, you’re right.”


	7. Rabbit Stew and Goslings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Anon, requesting a Hayhanna Easter ficlet.

"So we get another of Plutarch’s idiot retro North American holidays," Haymitch said dryly, after Joy Cloudmist’s newcast cheerfully announced the return of Easter, the Spring Festival. 

The “trick of treat” aspects of Halloween had flopped miserably last year given that most people still associated children in costumes with the Games. Mostly people just had done parties for the kids where they ate candy and played games and carved pumpkins. Apparently pumpkin carving had really taken off as an art form in Seven, given they had previously had pumpkins as targets in their axe-throwing contests at the Harvest Festival. 

As for Christmas, people grumbled that most of that—gift giving, Seven’s holiday trees, Five’s lights, Twelve’s caroling—already was folded into New Year’s traditions, so why the hell did they need to hold the same holiday twice in a week?

"A rabbit brings kids candy?" Johanna said dubiously, staring down at Walter, peacefully asleep in the crook of Haymitch’s arm. "Shit, he doesn’t even have teeth yet, he doesn’t need candy." She rubbed her stomach. "I wouldn’t mind feeding this one some chocolate through me, though…" She eyed him with a grin. He got the hint. This second time around the block on pregnancy, he was far more used to her food cravings.

"The only woodland critters I want in this house are dead ones, thank you very much," he muttered, remembering the fluffy golden squirrels. "In the stew pot."

"Rabbit stew for Easter. Done," Johanna said cheerfully.

"We could give people some goslings," he said with a wicked smirk. Joy had suggested purchasing chicks from Ten and starting backyard chicken coops by it. "Lissa and Mitty certainly aren’t lacking for ‘em."

"Oh, by all means, let’s sic the hellgeese on the neighbors by handing over some of their devil spawn.” She rolled her eyes, but her fingers were gentle as she touched his cheek with a grin. ”So, about that chocolate?”

"Yeah, fine, I’ll go see the Sandrys, shop ain’t closed for another hour," he muttered, handing Walt over to her carefully and already reaching for his coat. 

At least it was far easier for him not having the sweet-shop run by Donners anymore. The Sandrys were from One. He didn’t doubt they’d have Easter candy in their shop window by the weekend. 

When he turned back for a moment to see Johanna sitting on the couch, Wally snuggled down in her arms just over the swell of her stomach, it was easier to remember just how much had changed, and for the better. He didn’t need a festival for that.


End file.
